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NX Gamer - Top 5 Best Graphics in Games 2015

IGN's award was "best visuals," which is a fairly open topic. NX gamer is more explicitly awarding cutting-edge tech, and sure enough, didn't feature any Nintendo games.
I thought it was IGN but it wasn't it was GameTrailers and the category was "Best Graphics", not best visuals
 

wazoo

Member
Explain further. I do not agree with you.

Using your PS3 example, there is a change in pixel density with the use of adaptive resolutions (i.e. when the resolution dropped this resulted in larger/scaled pixels).

The same cannot be said for The Order which can resolve the same level of detail as a full 1080p game.

You are mixing things. I do not want to lower the impact of TO rendering, which is already great with MSAAx4, but the rendering task is fixed at 1920*800.

Imagine a PC game (forget the Order) running at that resolution of 1920*800 in a window plotted on a desktop at 1080p. Do you think this effort would be the same as running the game in a larger window of 1920*1080 (or fullscreen at that resolution).

Being native res 1:1 means nothing with regards to rendering effort.

In fact the order could run on a monitor of 1920*800 fully native (with no black bar), the rendering effort would be the same.

People have argued that black bars were here for cinematic reasons, I disagree, but I think this is a endless subjective discussion. Speaking only about rendering, things are clearer.
 

thelastword

Banned
Some would argue that since there are fewer pixels being rendered, the results aren't as impressive as if a 1920x1080 backbuffer were used.

Further, plenty of people dislike the use of non-16:9 aspect ratios in current games, and given the lack of a directed camera during gameplay this isn't all that unreasonable.

Also, TO1886 actually does feature scaling artifacts. Although a 1920x800 buffer is mapped to a 1920x800 region on-screen, it goes through a distortion filter. So, for instance, stairstep aliases have different sizes (I thought I had a clearer copy of that image but I can't seem to find it, ugh).
This doesn't really matter in a game with such soft resolve, though. If it were Ridge Racer 7, then it might be a problem.
RR7 had no AA, this game has lots of coverage for aliasing, I don't think they are comparable. Do you believe RR7 would have any issues with jaggies if it had the anti-aliasing coverage 1886 has? I don't think so....


And btw, these aspect ratios are not farfetched for the genre. RE4 did it years ago, but nobody was concerned about that, everybody was too busy calling it the best looking and most impressive technical game on the GC. Even the Evil Within shot for something similar, yes EW had framerate issues, but you can chalk that more to the engine and the competency of the devs to sort these niggles out.

1886 is native within the black bars, just like any bluray that has black bars, the softness of the image has nothing to do with any scaling, moreso to do with the PP effects used. You do realize that you can uncheck some of these filters, do you?
 

HTupolev

Member
RR7 had no AA, this game has lots of coverage for aliasing, I don't think they are comparable. Do you believe RR7 would have any issues with jaggies if it had the anti-aliasing coverage 1886 has? I don't think so....
I don't think so either, and I also wasn't presenting an argument that has anything to do with whether or not that's true.

the softness of the image has nothing to do with any scaling, moreso to do with the PP effects used.
And I didn't say that it did. I said that the scaling doesn't matter because of the softness, not that it was causing the softness.

You do realize that you can uncheck some of these filters, do you?
Yes.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
RR7 had no AA, this game has lots of coverage for aliasing, I don't think they are comparable. Do you believe RR7 would have any issues with jaggies if it had the anti-aliasing coverage 1886 has? I don't think so....


And btw, these aspect ratios are not farfetched for the genre. RE4 did it years ago, but nobody was concerned about that, everybody was too busy calling it the best looking and most impressive technical game on the GC. Even the Evil Within shot for something similar, yes EW had framerate issues, but you can chalk that more to the engine and the competency of the devs to sort these niggles out.

1886 is native within the black bars, just like any bluray that has black bars, the softness of the image has nothing to do with any scaling, moreso to do with the PP effects used. You do realize that you can uncheck some of these filters, do you?

TO is still rendering less pixels. And very few have issues with calling The Order the most impressive game on the Ps4.
 

wazoo

Member
TO is still rendering less pixels. And very few have issues with calling The Order the most impressive game on the Ps4.

People in this thread have discarded the resolution as a factor for best graphics performance. In that sense, The Order get a free pass for its rendering resolution, which is logical.
 
Yes, a great deal better....

Agreed, people always come into tech threads talking about laptop cpu's and such, but look at what devs are accomplishing when they've not even began to put GPU COMPUTE into full use.

If AK looked rough in spots on the PS4, with it's high quality assets and dense detail and had much better rain effects and such even over the PC version (for the longest while), I don't know what to say to you, Witcher 3 is an inconsistent mess on consoles on quality of presets alone, notwithstanding it's questionable framerate even after the latest patch (far less before). Witcher 3 just does not belong on that list, even the PC version at max. Texturework is not impresseive, animations leave a lot to be desired and it's lighting is a far cry from MGSV, if an open world deserves to be on that list it's the phantom pain.


Driveclub did not halve it's framerate as opposed to every other arcade racer in the last ten years on consoles. In any case we're talking about visual detail and fidelity as opposed to the fraps OSD indicating that we are running at locked 60. 1886 and DC are two of the best looking games at 30fps which also control fluidly. One has the best sense of speed in an arcade racer and (the order)...is one of the most responsive TPS I've ever played irrespective of they not being 60fps......

Thank you.....

Is this some type of condescending remark aimed at discrediting a well renowned tech guy who works in the industry? So if I make up some two-bit website in a couple of minutes in webstudio, pay the cheap fee to get a domain and host it, then I'd be more credible? Such remarks are always very strange to read.


In any case, this was Nxgamer's take on what he's seen for the year. I agree for the most part, but I would not have Battlefront as high nor would I have ROTR in the top 5. ROTR is too inconsistent with it's presentation.

ROTR: Questionable textures everywhere, bad IQ, tressfx only on Lara, better facial animation on lara. Videos for effects in scenes. Technically it made some strides over the prior version of the engine but it's way behind the technical curve and the consistency shown in many other releases for that year.

Battlefront: Everytime I see this game, I can see why some persons would be impressed but I can also see immediately why it's not all that impressive from a technical standpoint.... it's akin to games like the older RE's and Fear Effects on the PS1 with their pre-rendered backgrounds, not that this is what's happening here tit for tat, but photogrammetry would be that modern day compromise that attempts to give us realistic looking areas/textures at the expense of intricate and more importantly varied detail. The pop-in and lod issues are glaring, gun models are not impressive, animation is nothing to write home about and character models are nothing to write home about either, outside of their suits.

I'm sure it looks great at 4k the first couple of times you run it, but then you realize there's very little effort in any one map, no nuanced detail, brown canyons are just browns stretched out, same is the case for the forest area or the lava area. it's just a long repeated photo realistic texture for the most part. As for the people praising the 60fps, it's no wonder this game does 60fps on very modest hardware, it may look the part at times at high resolutions, but it's no technical windforce, it's not doing anything really demanding in contrast to it's peers on that list.

As for my take;

I believe 1886 wins hands down, AK should be second, UD third.....

The only one I haven't played on that list is TO, and I probably never will.

I played all of the others and not one of them impressed me as much as TW3. On PC, of course, I also have it on PS4 but there it looks like crap. UD wouldn't even be on my list.

Opinions I guess!
 

Clockwork

Member
You are mixing things. I do not want to lower the impact of TO rendering, which is already great with MSAAx4, but the rendering task is fixed at 1920*800.

Imagine a PC game (forget the Order) running at that resolution of 1920*800 in a window plotted on a desktop at 1080p. Do you think this effort would be the same as running the game in a larger window of 1920*1080 (or fullscreen at that resolution).

Being native res 1:1 means nothing with regards to rendering effort.

In fact the order could run on a monitor of 1920*800 fully native (with no black bar), the rendering effort would be the same.

People have argued that black bars were here for cinematic reasons, I disagree, but I think this is a endless subjective discussion. Speaking only about rendering, things are clearer.

When did I say anything about rendering effort? I'm not even sure how that entered the discussion, nor should it for the topic at hand.

Obviously there is a savings in rendering workload by rendering at 1920x800 versus 1920x1080, but the way it was implemented makes it hard to argue that it impacts image quality in any meaningful way. This is in contrast to the PS3 example you have where detail would be lost because the image is being scaled/stratched.

The comments thus far (before posting) is that the resolution of the game hampers image quality which is bullocks. It can resolve the same detail, just at a different aspect ratio.

If The Order was rendered full screen at 1920x1080 one of two thing would happen..they would need to render more vertically or render render less horizontally each of which has it's own pros and cons from both a workload and presentation standpoint. It still says nothing about whether it would look better because for all intents and purposes it can't. The pixel density is exactly the same.
 
Disagree with The Order...

image.php


Star Wars Episode 8 Spoilers!!!
 

Vlaphor

Member
I think a big part of graphics is the frame rate as well. I could probably get GTA3 running on an SNES with the Super FX Chip 2 if I didn't mind frames measured in months. Until Dawn looks amazing, but generally runs pretty bad, especially when outdoors.
 

Raist

Banned
With him being a big graphics tech whore, it doesn't surprise me that TW3 isn't in his top 5. It loogs great, sure, but that's mostly because of the art style and decent attention to details. There's an awful lot of repetition and the game doesn't have anything special graphics-wise. It's a bit like BB in that sense, really.
 

wazoo

Member
Obviously there is a savings in rendering workload by rendering at 1920x800 versus 1920x1080, but the way it was implemented makes it hard to argue that it impacts image quality in any meaningful way. This is in contrast to the PS3 example you have where detail would be lost because the image is being scaled/stratched..

Ok. In that sense, you are right. IQ is the same as a game at full screen 1080p.
 

reKon

Banned
I skipped over the Until Dawn part because I have that game haven't played yet.

Everything I've been hearing about The Order was how horrible of a game it was. I'm aware of the games problems and why it was such a disappointment. I just probably spoiled the shit out of myself for watching this video, but everything that I saw in this video actually really makes me want to play it. It's been on sale for $10 multiple times and my first reaction was to stay away and not even bother. After seeing this video, I feel like I owe it RAD to at least try the game for what they were able to accomplish visually and because the gameplay is probably decent (I'm assuming just not enough of the good gameplay moments in the eyes of reviewers).

I enjoyed the short clips of music I heard from the games soundtrack as well.
 

Andrea Pessino

Ready At Dawn Game Director
The decision on the aspect ratio for The Order was made long before the PS4 specs were even defined - it was made most definitely for artistic reasons (it is clear some people have an issue with that decision, and I certainly respect that, all I am stating is that it was deliberate to achieve a specific visual style).

Are there performance benefits to it? Of course - fewer pixels need to be rendered! The benefit, however, is relatively small because the biggest offenders when it comes to taxing the GPU are not typically related to fill rate (not in our case, at least). In the PS3 days, which was very fill rate bound, the benefit of the black bars would have been much bigger, with the PS4 not as much.

I would say that a version of TO without the black bars would have been pretty much indistinguishable from the version shipped, as far as performance/image quality are concerned (different story artistically, of course :) ). A few tweaks here and there with certain dynamic effects would have been all the adjustment needed.
 
The decision on the aspect ratio for The Order was made long before the PS4 specs were even defined - it was made most definitely for artistic reasons (it is clear some people have an issue with that decision, and I certainly respect that, all I am stating is that it was deliberate to achieve a specific visual style).

Are there performance benefits to it? Of course - fewer pixels need to be rendered! The benefit, however, is relatively small because the biggest offenders when it comes to taxing the GPU are not typically related to fill rate (not in our case, at least). In the PS3 days, which was very fill rate bound, the benefit of the black bars would have been much bigger, with the PS4 not as much.

I would say that a version of TO without the black bars would have been pretty much indistinguishable from the version shipped, as far as performance/image quality are concerned (different story artistically, of course :) ). A few tweaks here and there with certain dynamic effects would have been all the adjustment needed.
i'm not sure how it works but couldn't they have also filled the blackbars as extensions of the screen instead of extending the screen itself?
Really? Is this something widely known? His list doesn't reflect that.
I think he's most impressed by ND, and that's why people would interpret him as having a preference for playstation.
 

sujay

Member
The decision on the aspect ratio for The Order was made long before the PS4 specs were even defined - it was made most definitely for artistic reasons (it is clear some people have an issue with that decision, and I certainly respect that, all I am stating is that it was deliberate to achieve a specific visual style).

Are there performance benefits to it? Of course - fewer pixels need to be rendered! The benefit, however, is relatively small because the biggest offenders when it comes to taxing the GPU are not typically related to fill rate (not in our case, at least). In the PS3 days, which was very fill rate bound, the benefit of the black bars would have been much bigger, with the PS4 not as much.

I would say that a version of TO without the black bars would have been pretty much indistinguishable from the version shipped, as far as performance/image quality are concerned (different story artistically, of course :) ). A few tweaks here and there with certain dynamic effects would have been all the adjustment needed.

this is the Chief Technology Officer of Ready At Dawn btw
 
i'm not sure how it works but couldn't they have also filled the blackbars as extensions of the screen instead of extending the screen itself?I think he's most impressed by ND, and that's why people would interpret him as having a preference for playstation.

Well that just means he has good taste ;)
How could any guy that is a technical analyst not be impressed by ND.
 

Trace

Banned
Not even close. Until Dawn has nice character models and looks good in general but runs like ass. Witcher 3 PC and GTAV pc >>>>

Nope, Until Dawn looks better than both. I run a 980ti and I would never pick Witcher 3 or GTA 5 to look better. Smoother? Sure. But better? Naw son.
 

Andrea Pessino

Ready At Dawn Game Director
i'm not sure how it works but couldn't they have also filled the blackbars as extensions of the screen instead of extending the screen itself?

I am not sure I understand what you are asking, but to achieve that aspect ratio, while maintaining the native resolution (scaling ruins everything when it comes to IQ :) ), black bars were the only way to go.
 
I am not sure I understand what you are asking, but to achieve that aspect ratio, while maintaining the native resolution (scaling ruins everything when it comes to IQ :) ), black bars were the only way to go.
you were basically saying making the screen smaller made it easier to push out better graphical fidelity. I was saying instead of there being black bars, what if the screen just extended further down and upward and filled up the whole screen?
 

nib95

Banned
you were basically saying making the screen smaller made it easier to push out better graphical fidelity. I was saying instead of there being black bars, what if the screen just extended further down and upward and filled up the whole screen?

That would be scaling, which would reduce the overall image quality. What he's saying, and what other RAD devs have said in the past, was that the aspect ratio was an artistic choice, but it did allow them to go with a cleaner IQ or slightly better visuals, or in this case 4xMSAA. I think another RAD dev mentioned that 1920x800 with 4xMSAA was still more taxing than a full 1920x1080 with a 2xAA equivalent.
 
That would be scaling, which would reduce the overall image quality. What he's saying, and what other RAD devs gave said in the past, was that the aspect ratio was an artistic choice, but it did allow them to go with a cleaner IQ, or in this case 4xMSAA. I think another RAD dev mentioned that 1920x800 with 4xMSAA was still more taxing than a full 1920x1080 with a 2xAA equivalent.
I see. So if the black bars weren't there then the game wouldn't have been as graphically impressive.
 

Andrea Pessino

Ready At Dawn Game Director
That would be scaling, which would reduce the overall image quality. What he's saying, and what other RAD devs have said in the past, was that the aspect ratio was an artistic choice, but it did allow them to go with a cleaner IQ or slightly better visuals, or in this case 4xMSAA. I think another RAD dev mentioned that 1920x800 with 4xMSAA was still more taxing than a full 1920x1080 with a 2xAA equivalent.

That was me that said that - and it is still true. :)
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Nope, Until Dawn looks better than both. I run a 980ti and I would never pick Witcher 3 or GTA 5 to look better. Smoother? Sure. But better? Naw son.

Nope, I played all 3 too. On a 970 no less, both witcher 3 and GTAV blows out Until Dawn.

Even if you have zero standards for performance and aren't taking into consideration that Until Dawn runs at sub 30 fps most of the time, both GTA and WItcher 3 just look better.

Not even gonna waste my time finding comparison shots because it would be obvious to anyone who played all 3.
 

TheYanger

Member
I love Until Dawn but it literally only has nice looking faces. the rest doesn't stand out from anything else on this gen.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
he was just helping me to understand. are you a RAD dev?
Given he just said that he was the one that tweeted about the resolution/AA differences then it means he's Andrea Pessino, Chief Technology Officer at RaD.

I am not sure I understand what you are asking, but to achieve that aspect ratio, while maintaining the native resolution (scaling ruins everything when it comes to IQ :) ), black bars were the only way to go.
I absolutely agree here, scaling artifacts are a huge detriment to IQ and I'm glad The Order didn't suffer from them.

BTW does anyone know if Battlefront is doing res scaling using a software scaler instead of a hardware scaler? It looks much cleaner to me than other 900p games on PS4.
 

Andrea Pessino

Ready At Dawn Game Director
Essentially, yes. Either they would have had to dial back on some of the dynamic stuff, or drop AA to 2x.

No, when I made that comment it was not in the context of black bars or fill rate - I was talking about the cost of AA solutions in relation to each other.

Our guys refined the AA even further in the later phases of development (part of the reason why later builds look better than the old ones we showed, and run much more efficiently) - at the end, as I was attempting to explain, the black bars afford a minimal amount of performance boost, mostly related to fill rate intensive moments.

Without the black bars the game would have had basically the same IQ and performed equally well, I can assure you. :)
 
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